BRITISH BRAILLE A Restatement of Standard English Braille Compiled and Authorized by the Braille Authority of the United Kingdom Royal National Institute of the Blind Bakewell Road, Orton Southgate Peterborough, Cambridgeshire PE2 6XU 2004 ISBN 0 901797 90 1 © Braille Authority of the United Kingdom 1992, 2004 Reprinted with corrections 2006 Registered Charity No. 1001157 Printed by RNIB, Peterborough 2006 CONTENTS Note ......................................................... 5 1. TERMINOLOGY ............................................. 7 2. CHARACTERS AND SIGNS .................................... 8 2.1. Letters of the alphabet .................................. 8 2.2. Numbers ............................................. 8 2.3. Punctuation signs....................................... 8 2.4. Composition signs ...................................... 9 2.5. Mathematical signs .................................... 10 2.6. Print symbols and braille reference signs . 11 2.7. Some signs from the braille computer code . 12 3. LIST OF CONTRACTIONS.................................... 15 3.1. Simple upper wordsigns ................................ 15 3.2. Simple upper groupsigns ................................ 15 3.3. Lower contractions .................................... 16 3.4. Composite wordsigns .................................. 17 3.5. Composite groupsigns.................................. 18 3.6. Shortforms .......................................... 18 4. USE OF PUNCTUATION SIGNS ............................... 20 4.1. Apostrophe .......................................... 20 4.2. Brackets............................................. 22 4.3. Dashes.............................................. 23 4.4. Ellipsis .............................................. 25 4.5. Hyphen ............................................. 26 4.6. Oblique stroke ....................................... 26 4.7. Quotation marks ...................................... 28 4.8. Order of signs ........................................ 29 5. USE OF COMPOSITION SIGNS ................................ 30 5.1. Accents ............................................. 30 5.2. Capitals ............................................. 31 5.3. Computer code indicator ............................... 38 5.4. Dot locator .......................................... 40 5.5. Italics ............................................... 40 5.6. Letter sign ........................................... 47 5.7. Line sign............................................. 52 1 CONTENTS 5.8. Non-Roman scripts .................................... 52 6. NUMBERS AND RELATED SIGNS .............................. 53 6.1. Cardinal numbers ..................................... 53 6.2. Contracted numbers ................................... 57 6.3. Decimals ............................................ 58 6.4. Fractions ............................................ 59 6.5. Mathematical signs .................................... 60 6.6. Ordinal numbers ...................................... 63 6.7. Roman numerals ...................................... 64 7. ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS .............................. 66 7.1. Print abbreviations..................................... 66 7.2. Print symbols......................................... 74 7.3. References........................................... 78 7.4. Scansion and stress .................................... 82 7.5. Unit abbreviations ..................................... 84 8. USE OF CONTRACTIONS .................................... 91 8.1. General ............................................. 91 8.2. Simple upper wordsigns ................................ 92 8.3. Simple upper groupsigns ................................ 95 8.4. Lower contractions .................................... 97 8.5. Composite wordsigns ................................. 105 8.6. Composite groupsigns................................. 108 8.7. Shortforms ......................................... 109 8.8. Preference.......................................... 111 8.9. Bridging ............................................ 112 8.10. English names ...................................... 114 8.11. Foreign words and names ............................. 115 8.12. Early English ....................................... 116 8.13. Stammered, lisped and slurred words . 116 8.14. Word endings ...................................... 117 9. LAYOUT AND BOOK WORK ................................ 118 9.1. General ............................................ 118 9.2. Book work ......................................... 120 9.3. Correspondence ..................................... 121 9.4. Notes ............................................. 122 9.5. Paragraphs.......................................... 123 9.6. Plays .............................................. 124 9.7. Poetry ............................................. 125 2 CONTENTS 9.8. Quoted passages ..................................... 127 9.9. Word division ....................................... 128 APPENDICES................................................ 129 I. Some foreign alphabets .................................. 129 (A) Greek ......................................... 129 (B) Hebrew ....................................... 130 (C) Old English..................................... 131 (D) Russian ........................................ 132 (E) Welsh ......................................... 133 II. Signs used in some foreign codes . 135 (A) French ........................................ 135 (B) German ....................................... 135 (C) Italian ......................................... 135 (D) Spanish ........................................ 136 III. Guide to contracting ................................... 137 INDEX ..................................................... 151 3 4 NOTE The Braille Authority of the United Kingdom, which has issued this book, is the standard-setting body for braille in this country. In the event of any divergence between the print edition and the braille edition of this work, the latter should be regarded as the definitive text. The object of this book is to provide for transcribers, copyists and proofreaders of braille a standard interpretation of the usages of inkprint, and for readers, teachers and students of braille a guide to agreed practice. However, no attempt has been made to legislate comprehensively for the writing of braille which is not derived from a print original, or which is for private use only. In such cases writers will not infrequently find themselves faced with a choice of acceptable conventions to follow; but within a single document they should try to be consistent in the way they exercise such choices. This book should be regarded as a work of reference, and not as a teaching manual. This edition covers rules both for transcription showing capitals and for transcription without showing capitals. Sections marked with an asterisk contain rules relating to the latter case only. In this print edition, braille contractions and sequencing in examples have been indicated by the use of underlining. 5 6 1. TERMINOLOGY 1. TERMINOLOGY Dots are numbered within the braille cell as follows: Top left, 1; Middle left, 2; Bottom left, 3; Top right, 4; Middle right, 5; Bottom right, 6. [In the glossary below, terms defined in their own entries are italicized.] Abbreviation: shortened representation of word or words in print. Cell: 6-dot matrix which is the basis of braille. Character: any of the 63 combinations of dots that can occupy a braille cell. Composite: consisting of more than 1 character. Composition sign: braille sign which has no direct print equivalent. Contraction: braille sign which represents a word or a group of letters. Grade 1 braille: grade of braille which includes all the signs given in section 2 and the rules relating to them. Braille contractions are not used. Grade 2 braille: grade of braille which includes all the signs given in sections 2 and 3 and the rules relating to them. Braille contractions are used. Groupsign: contraction which represents a group of letters. Initial: at the beginning of a word. Lefthand: lacking dots 4, 5 and 6. Lower: lacking dots 1 and 4. Medial: neither at the beginning nor at the end of a word. Punctuation sign: braille sign which represents a print punctuation mark. Righthand: lacking dots 1, 2 and 3. Sequence: 2 or more words written without an intervening space. Shortform: composite contraction representing a word and not consisting of a righthand character followed by one upper character. Sign: 1 or more characters with indivisible significance. Simple: consisting of 1 character. Space: cell containing no embossed dots. String: series of unspaced characters. Symbol: print sign which is not a letter, number, accent or punctuation mark. Terminal: at the end of a word. Upper: including dot 1 and/or dot 4. Wordsign: contraction which represents a complete word. 7 2. CHARACTERS AND SIGNS 2. CHARACTERS AND SIGNS Where a string of letters is required to demonstrate the application of a sign, xxx is used. 2.1. LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET a a f f k k p p u u b b g g l l q q v v c c h h m m r r w w d d i i n n s s x x e e j j o o t t y y z z 2.2. NUMBERS #a 1 #d 4 #g 7 #b 2 #e 5 #h 8 #c 3 #f 6 #i 9 #j 0 2.3. PUNCTUATION SIGNS 1 , comma 2 ; semicolon 3 : colon 4 . full stop or abbreviation point 6 ! exclamation mark 7 xxx 7 (xxx) open and close round brackets 8 ? question mark 8 2. CHARACTERS AND SIGNS 8 xxx 0 "xxx" open and close double inverted